To be freaked out a little by Amazon?

[GinNeeded]

I'd heard that smart phones listened in to conversations to target advertising but dismissed it as tinfoil hat territory. People must have googled stuff, browsed etc

I popped on Amazon last night and random stuff I had chatted to the kids about in the day was in the 'recommended for you' section.

Including but not limited to:
*Old fashioned fly sticky strip, liked I'd hung in the kitchen (whats that?
isn't that cruel mummy?)

*Bug zapper ( can we get an electronic fly trap, like a tennis bat)

*Chlorine filter (could we put our pet fish in the swimming pool on holiday?)

*Muffin cases (What can I use to make a rosette?)

*Plastic Sapphires (What are those blue jewels on the real plastic gold pirate treasure?)

None of the above was searched for at all.

I understand targeted adverts, I realise that when I actively go online I am leaving a foot print, but chatting crap with the kids?

Now I am concerned about what else it hears and where that information goes!

We don't have an Echo or voice activated thing-a-me bobs either.

AIBU to not have realised this?

I cover my webcam and I have an app that mutes my mic for me too.

Husband and I made a joke about something and then the adverts for it started popping up on Amazon. We have Alexa, she is definitely listening.

Diana there is a big difference between one individual or a group lying about the specifics of a niche area of data usage, and what your proposing, which is that every single large IT provider in the entire world is collaborating together in an enormous data scam that could at any moment be uncovered by an A Level Computer Science student.

I just opened Wireshark on my laptop and had another look at the traffic going across my WiFi network.

Nope turns out my devices aren't listening to me.

Maybe the big companies know I might be on to them so they have turned that feature off on everything I own?

Or maybe it's just tinfoil hat bullshit?

@PatriarchyPersonified out of interest how would you explain my example (copied below)? It's definitely not something I'd mentioned before/googled, and I really can't believe that is usually the top suggestion for 'do you...'

I'm not being shitty, genuinely interested, as I would like to be wrong.

Watching a programme and he said to me 'do you get bail money back?'. Went to google, types in 'do you...' and the first predicted result was 'do you get bail money back'.

One-in-a-million chances happen to 7,000 people every day.

That assumes that Amazon are churning out adverts containing millions of different products, and just by coincidence a small number of people are seeing things they have recently talked about.

In practice, I don't think I've ever seen an Amazon advert containing products that wasn't specifically advertising things I have previously searched for. If Amazon are targeting products at you, they're not doing it at random.

Itsnice

Out of interest I just typed 'do you get' into Google and the second highest suggestion was 'do you get bail money back'.

Genuinely, I'm not just saying that.

It's probably a really popular search worldwide.

Notdavidtennant

No, it assumes that millions of people are seeing adverts every day, not that millions of adverts are going to the same person.

@PatriarchyPersonified the OP is correct. I had a foreign language classes last year and we talked about vocabulary fir visiting a GP.
I then had an advertisement on my FB for migraine medicine even though I never searched it...
I didn't believe it either.

Do you get bail money back comes up second for me too.

No, it assumes that millions of people are seeing adverts every day, not that millions of adverts are going to the same person.

I never said that they were chucking out millions of adverts to the same person.

Maybe try to read and understand my comment correctly instead of assuming that you are much cleverer than everyone else and jumping for an immediate "gotcha".

Itsnice There's software that links between what you're reading on here and then what you might be searching for on Google.

I've bought marketing software for clients. It's amazing -scary- what it can do.

Vivienne

Alternatively, lots of people in your demographic suffer from migraines and it was just a coincidence?

As a PP stated, a million to one chance happens to approx 7000 people every day

@PatriarchyPersonified
what your proposing, which is that every single large IT provider in the entire world is collaborating together in an enormous data scam that could at any moment be uncovered

Am I proposing that? When did that happen?

This is weird. Just read this thread, then went onto my amazon app to see if anything showed up from my conversations. Nearly everything listed on the OP was in my recommendations....
What the hell?!?

On iPad/iPhone - go into Settings, click on each app and disable Siri and Search suggestions.

Diana

Because if what you are saying is true, that is the only logical explanation.

Thank you unless they're listening to your mind now

@ItsNiceItsDifferentItsUnusual @PatriarchyPersonified Me too.

I work in digital marketing. Companies can definitely track all your online activity (as well as some other activity, like your shopping habits if you use club cards, your location if you have location services turned on, your relationships on Facebook etc etc) and predict with scary accuracy the things you might want to see or do based on that activity. But if anyone was listening in to your conversations without your explicit permission*^^ there would be a ton of evidence and lots of people would have uncovered it by now.

• They do track searches made via Siri, Alexa, OK Google etc, and this could be on an occasion when you've activated the device by mistake.

@Boofay Yes, because they know you've read this thread, or because you're a Mumsnet user and Mumsnet users are suddenly searching for those things etc etc. I got recommended fly paper too! It's incredibly clever and intricate but it doesn't involve tracking spoken conversations where you haven't given permission.

Boofay just been on mine and the fly paper is there too! I’ve never searched for it!

I assume the following is just coincidence and directed marketing but it has freaked me out a bit...

We've just got back from the US, and while I was there I noticed that my sponsored stuff on Facebook was for American things. I thought I had turned off location. I posted nothing about being there during our time away, although I was tagged by one friend in one city, and another US relative made a comment on DH's photo about wishing they could see us while we were there. I posted no photos and didn't tag any locations.

When I got back a couple of days ago, I started getting sponsored ads for a particular variety of hand soap that I had noticed in people's houses, and had even looked for in a supermarket there, but which I had never searched for online or mentioned in real life to anyone. Yesterday, I saw another sponsored ad for some particular US National Park postcards - I had bought some of these at a National Park. Of all the products that could have been advertised to me, why did these ones that I was particularly interested in come up?

PatriarchyPersonified

How do you explain the op's experience then? You seem to know what you're talking about.

Apart from confirmation bias which is crap.

heartsee

In what way is confirmation bias 'crap'?

just been on mine and the fly paper is there too

We were discussing at work yesterday that it's fly season and the little fuckers are everything. If fly paper was in my recommendations too, I would think it more likely that Amazon / digital marketing people are also aware that it's fly season

Like others have said, the algorithms are so complex and advanced - and marketing is so pervasive - that's it's not very surprising that advertising can be so eerily targeted.